Think about this if you decide to visit a gliding club one day. Would you settle for a leisurely ride through the sky in a glider, or would you be happy to experience a little plus? Print this article out and take it with you the next time you go on a gliding club passenger flight! Use one of the suggestions to liven up the flight for yourself or one of your family members!
Here’s a roundup of all the most exciting things you can ask for when traveling in a glider. These thrill ride ideas have been drawn from many memories of my years as a gliding instructor. I found that my passengers and students had experienced a variety of interesting little escapades. Teenage passengers in particular are usually up for a thrill ride of some kind!
Now, I’m guessing that most of you reading this article haven’t taken a ride in a glider, or glider, as they’re sometimes called. These are the full size planes I’m talking about, not the hang gliders! Gliding clubs are spread across many countries, especially in Europe, the US, Australia and South Africa. It’s easy to get in touch with a club and just show up on the weekend for a passenger flight. I won’t go into prices as this varies a lot from country to country and even from club to club. But the cost is very reasonable in most cases, for a 10 or 20 minute flight. Longer flights are possible if weather conditions are suitable.
winch releases
If you can, try to get a flight at a gliding club that uses winch launching. Yes, the gliders are actually winch skyward at the end of a long cable. The winch is powered by a powerful engine, often a V8, and pulls the glider up like a giant kite. Sometimes the cable breaks, but this is pretty routine and just results in a short flight and some inconvenience for the ground crew. Come to think of it, this situation could be considered a thrill ride for an unsuspecting passenger! First, the jolt when the cable breaks. Second, the rather sudden nose down motion of the glider as the pilot makes sure the airspeed stays high. Sudden but smooth.
Now why even normal winch launches exciting? Because you go up like a fighter plane, that’s why. The glider’s nose points skyward at an angle of about 45 degrees, and you reach launch height in less than 30 seconds. Even an experienced glider pilot tends to enjoy it over and over again! I certainly did.
An even more exciting launch form is rarely done nowadays. was called a reflex release. The tow rope, yes, a rope, not a wire or cable, it had a bit of stretch. It was connected to the glider release point at one end, and the other end was connected to a powerful car. A loop was arranged to establish a certain amount of slack in the rope, before the car shot down the runway. TWANG. I remember seeing a Blanik L13 with 2 people on board launch itself from the ground in about 3 meters (10 feet) and start climbing like a nostalgic angel. Ah, those were the days.
push the envelope
By ‘pushing the envelope’ I mean flying a plane a little closer to its limits than usual!
Something to try that’s not too extreme, but still exciting for, say, your mother or grandmother, is to ask the pilot to throw some Really steep turns. Sailplanes often need to do this anyway, to stay within the confines of narrow patches of rising air called thermals. Ok, how steep? Try 60 or 70 degrees. That’s pretty steep, it will look like the glider is on its side. What’s more, slight G-forces will begin to pull on Granny’s face as the glider stays in the turn and the horizon spins past.
Now it’s dad’s turn. Let’s mistreat him a little more than Grandma! Ask the pilot to do a couple of stalls and turns. This is what happens in a deliberate stop. The pilot slows the glider by pointing the nose up and holding it there with back pressure on the joystick. But without a motor, the glider can’t climb like that for very long. After a while, everything goes deathly silent as the speed drops below the glider’s stall speed. Suddenly, the nose tips down and Dad finds himself staring at the ground, apparently launching right at him! The glider picks up speed again, very quickly, then the pilot carefully returns it to level flight again. Dad was caught off guard, but he thinks he might enjoy the next one!
The pilot then performs a turn. Everything is the same as for the stable. EXCEPT, just before the nose goes down this time, the pilot kicks the rudder all the way. The joystick is held just back against the bumpers. The poor glider just refuses to fly now. A wing drops, the nose drops, the ground is right in front of Dad, spinning and spinning and spinning. The altimeter drops, mom on the ground wonders what it will be like to raise the kids alone… But no problem. The pilot deftly stops the spin and smoothly pulls the glider out of the resulting dive.
Now it’s El Nino’s turn. He has a wide smile on his face. Give me everything grandma and daddy had, plus plus please! The Kid is game for anything, so the instructor decides to go through as much of the basic aerobatic repertoire as the altitude allows. Sharp turns, stalls, spins, then wing-overs, loops, a slow turn, a stall turn. A little tamer than you might see doing a Pitts special at an air show, but The Kid loves every second of it.
some weird stuff
I just can’t resist throwing in a couple of weird things I remember doing. First, the fun exercise of throwing an entire roll of toilet paper out of the glider’s clear vision panel. Then, turning back to see the dissolving streamer floating in the air. What is the point? To cut it to pieces, of course, with the glider’s wing! Yes, it’s a lot of fun flying back and forth, traversing the streamer over and over again until it’s time to think about landing. I imagine that some passengers would also see something funny in it. Maybe.
A little trick I used to demonstrate to my passengers from time to time was inspired by astronaut training. Yes really! The two-seater glider used to have a microphone on a curly cord, plugged into the instrument panel. The passenger would be asked to hold out his hand, with the microphone resting in his palm. Then, after fueling the glider to almost full speed, I suddenly stopped on a climb. What followed next was a zero gravity demonstration. That is, weightlessness. By moving the joystick forward the right way, I was able to get the microphone to lift out of the passenger’s hand and float there, weightless, for a few seconds! If it wasn’t for the harnesses, the passenger and I would have floated around the cabin too!
See if your friendly local gliding instructor would like to do something similar to these last two!
conclusion
Everything described hereafter is very safe when done with an experienced pilot. In fact, things like sharp turns and stalls are standard training for glider pilots. So be a game and have fun!